The rate at which people are upgrading their iPhone, iPod touch and iPad devices to iOS 8 is slowing in the post-holiday season. As noted on Apple’s own App Store Distribution support page, though iOS 8 adoption is edging toward the 70 percent milestone it’s barely hit the 69 percent mark on Tuesday.

That’s a rather paltry one percentage point jump over an adoption rate of 68 percent as measured just two weeks ago. And by comparison, that figure was a healthy four percentage points increase over the previous December 22 update.

iOS 7 is currently installed on 28 percent of devices in the wild, while three percent of iPhones, iPods and iPads run an earlier version of Apple’s mobile operating system.

It’s interesting that iOS 7’s adoption rate has not changed since the last update two weeks ago — the one percent of newly added iOS 8 devices came solely at the expense of pre-iOS 7 hardware.

This is a worrying, though not alarming, sign.

For starters, it could indicate that the pool of iOS 7 users willing to upgrade to iOS 8 is shrinking fast, at least for the time being. Keep in mind that the holiday season has ended so people may not be as incentivized to upgrade to iOS 8 as before.

Also, the bloated iOS 8 update issue still persists: the nearly one-gigabyte over-the-air iOS 8 installer still requires a whopping 4.6 gigabytes of free on-device space before it can be installed.

We’re expecting to see an uptick in iOS 8 adoption rates in the coming days as Apple releases iOS 8.1.3, a bug-fix update said to improve the experience and therefore give those iOS 7 users more reasons to upgrade.

Another major surge in iOS 8 adoption should come in the form of the major iOS 8.2 software update that should release ahead of the Apple Watch’s arrival in March.

Finally, as Apple today reiterated in its email to developers, beginning February 1 apps not built with the iOS 8 SDK will no longer be accepted into the App Store.

The deadline updates to existing apps is June 1.

So this way or another, people are going to have to run iOS 8 if they are to enjoy the latest apps and games released next month onward.

Signing off, as noted by The Loop, Android Lollipop adoption rate is too small to even appear on Google’s distribution chart. Last updated on January 5, the chart had Android 4.4 Kit-Kat at 39.1 percent, Jellybean (Android 4.1.x through 4.3) at about 46 percent, while Lollipop didn’t even register.

For the sake of clarity, Google only reports devices that have accessed its Play store in the past fourteen days, which excludes a huge amount of low-end hardware, Chinese devices that run third-party stores and any hardware running forked Android versions, like Amazon’s Fire-branded gear.

There are many reasons why people aren’t updating to iOS 8 as compared to iOS 7. It was (and to an extent still is) extremely buggy on first release, which caused it to get bad press and attention on social media. From the start, its had a stigma of “avoid like the plague” if you want a working device.

Next, a fresh coat of paint does wonders to public perception and feeling of “newness”, which is why iOS 7 got adopted so quick. I can’t expect to see those same upgrade numbers until the OS goes through another visual change.

Last of course is the free space issue. Apple would be wise to add some dedicated memory to devices in the future, as I can only expect the updates to get larger and larger as they get more complex and art assets increase in resolution. A user, especially of an “it just works” device should not have to manage their storage to get an OS upgrade.

Xee

On the storage issue, Apple shouldn’t be so tight with the cost of storage space – so now it’s come back to bite them in the butt!

A’s Network

I hated iOS 8 since day one on my iPhone 5 and iPod touch 5th generation. I had it since the developer preview. It made things so slow that I downgraded to iOS 7 when I could.

My iPhone 4 was so slow on iOS 7 that I ended up geekgrading it to iOS 6.

john diaz

I agree. i believe that apple does this on purpose so that people have no option but to upgrade to their latest iPhone. deceitful marketing strategy but it works for them unfortunately.

credulousgeek

Correct!

Thomas Gehman

69%…that’s not funny at all cx

Andres

Well it looks like the other 31% doesn’t want to give up 3gb of storage on their device

singhay559

7.1.2.

iPodDroid

If only I was part of the 3%… iOS 8 Sucks… :/

WolfgangHoltz

It’s funny as hell that Apple have failed with their buggy iOS 8.
And nice to see that some users can make decisions by themselves and don’t update just because Apple want.

Proaxel

I (Still) have my iPhone 4, and I’m (not) proud to say that I’m still stuck on iOS 7.

These stuck on older firmwares are ppl with 16/8GB devices that cant update OTA due to low space and dont know what to do. I have several friends in this situation. I tell them to plug into a pc with itunes but i guess it is just too complicated for them.

rockdude094

I bet it’s not that hard to believe that some ppl love the way their device are?

Chetan

Wish there was an option to downgrade my dad’s iPhone 4S back to iOS 7. Earlier with minimal usage of just calls or few messages it used to come back home at 70% roughly. But after iOS 8 its 20% or less remaining with same minimal usage. Sad thing apple.